Reparations and the Couch

A group representing children of Holocaust survivors is demanding that Germany cover the costs of psychiatric treatment to alleviate cross-generational trauma they suffer. The group filed a class-action lawsuit in Tel Aviv calling for establishment of a fund to pay for regular therapy sessions for 15,000 to 20,000 people, Time magazine reports.

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Comments

Apter Wed. Jul 18, 2007

Ruth did you ever consider that your therapist will gain from such a lawsuit if successful?

Shriber Wed. Jul 18, 2007

"Commentary’s Gabriel Schoenfeld thinks the lawsuit is “preposterous.”"
As the son of Holocaust survivors I couldn't agree more.
Compensation should only go to people who actually lived through those horrible events.
Those suing have defiled the memory of their parent's suffering including, mine.

Norm Pressman Thu. Jul 19, 2007

It's worse than preposterous-it give anti-semites an example that shows that that Jews are only concnred about money. My grandfather was a prisoner at Buchenwald. I am first generation American on my mother's side-I'd turn the money down if offered to me.

Ruth Thu. Jul 19, 2007

"Man hands on misery to man/it deepens like the coastal shelf/get out as quickly as you can/and don't have any kids yourself" wrote the great Irish poet Philip Larkin, himself no stranger to a history of persecution. As children or grand-children of survivors, we are the unwilling heirs to this greatest of modern traumas. Do I think the Israelis have a whole lot of chutzpah to ask for this lawsuit? Yes. Do I think anything will (or necessarily SHOULD) actually come of it? No. But I do not think it is preposterous.

Ruth Tue. Jul 17, 2007

Absurd as it may sound (and isn't absurdity in many ways the very essence of modern Jewish identity?)I think there is some validity to this lawsuit. I am a third generation (both sets of grandparents were survivors),and my own therapist, unprompted by me, blamed ninety percent of my neuroses on the Holocaust. Clearly, I need to make her aware of this latest development, and perhaps I can get some sort of a discount.

Shriber Fri. Jul 20, 2007

Norm Pressman said:
"It's worse than preposterous-it give anti-semites an example that shows that that Jews are only concnred about money. My grandfather was a prisoner at Buchenwald. I am first generation American on my mother's side-I'd turn the money down if offered to me."
Kol Hakavod to Norm. He speaks for me too.

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